From Forest Team to Forest School: Indigenous Knowledge, Cultural, and Territorial Autonomy with the Mebêngôkre-Kayapo

The future of Mebêngôkre-Kayapo (Kayapo) society and their forest lies in empowering the young generation’s understanding of the vital importance of their land and culture. The Kayapo Project is working to secure that future. The paper describes the evolution of the Kayapo Forest School from idea to a small “Forest Team” to the design for scale into a Indigenous led Forest School within the heart of Kayapo Indigenous Territory. The Kayapo Project (kayapo.org) is an Indigenous-led NGO alliance ensuring Kayapo cultural, economic, political, and territorial autonomy over more than nine million hectares of federally demarcated Indigenous lands located in Brazil’s highly threatened, deforested southeastern Amazon (Anderson, 2019; Garcia et al., 2024; Zimmerman et al., 2020). The bloc of Kayapo Indigenous territories presents a stark contrast to the surrounding frontier society hungry for timber, gold, and land (ICFC, 2024). This paper builds upon over two decades of education, research, partnership, and practice (kayapo.org; Schwartzman et al., 2013; Zimmerman et al 2001; Schwartzman & Zimmerman 2005; Zanotti & Chernela, 2008; Zanotti & Palomino-Schalscha, 2016). The partnership began in 1992, when a Kayapo community set aside an 8,000 hectare reserve for tropical ecology training and research. The Pinkaiti Ecological Research Station (Pinkaiti) was established as a sustainable, education based economic alternative to intensive regional mahogany logging. The community prohibited logging and hunting in the Pinkaiti reserve and worked alongside dozens of Brazilian and North Americans to investigate areas of social and natural scientific inquiry (see Aruch, 2021). Pinkaiti demonstrated a successful model for cross-cultural knowledge exchange and collaboration with Indigenous peoples. In the early 2000s, Pinkaiti’s success catalyzed the expansion of the Kayapo-NGO alliance from a single program (Pinkaiti) to the creation and coordination of the three Kayapo NGOs across the full Kayapo territory (Garcia et al., 2024; Schwartzmann & Zimmerman, 2005). For Kayapo Forest Team to Forest School A similar transition is underway as the Kayapo Projects begins design and implementation of a comprehensive education program. In 2018, 13 communities along the Xingu River began a new education initiative; the Kayapo Equipe do Bà (Forest Team). The Forest Team is an intergenerational cohort of Kayapo learning technical biodiversity monitoring and environmental communication skills (e.g., camera trapping, drones, photography and filmmaking) alongside traditional ecological and place-based knowledge (e.g., animal tracking, crafting of cultural artifacts, Kayapo histories) in peer-to-peer group settings. The program runs for 4-6 weeks in the dry season (June - September), whenKayapo youth and elders come together for a series of 5-day sessions to learn and practice in-demand technical and cultural skills. To date, these learning projects have been mostly informal, guided by the elders’ skillset and youths’ interests. In 2024, feedback from Kayapo, Brazilian, and N. American participants indicated that the project could be enhanced by creating modular learning activities that teach technical skills and transmit Kayapo culture. A modular curriculum would support program monitoring, evaluation, and expansion while facilitating scale to additional communities and regions. Theoretical Framework for the Forest School Centering Indigenous knowledge, rights, and justice is paramount with the KFS (Tuck, McKenzie, & McCoy, 2014). Social and natural scientists increasingly acknowledge that epistemic diversity is vital for untangling complex socio-ecological questions (Smith, 2012; Washington, Johnson, & Chui, 2024; Wilson, 2008). Indigenous knowledge, which is holistic, relational, and context-based, contrasts with Western education models that often emphasize compartmentalized, standardized learning (Battiste, 2002). Many Indigenous communities, like the Kayapo, have long-standing oral history and place-based learning traditions, but these methods are often disregarded in favor of text-based, standardized education in schools (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Regalsky & Laurie, 2007). The KFS field-based curricula will provide complementary opportunities to transmit and document Indigenous knowledge and while supporting demands to bridge technical, linguistic, and cultural barriers. After providing some background on the Kayapo and Kayapo Project, this paper outlines the transition from Forest Team to Forest school, noting how co-constructing educational frameworks with Indigenous communities can allow (or not) culturally responsive teaching, contribute to educational equity, and promote reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Sample References: Anderson, J.L. (2019). Blood gold in the Brazilian rainforest. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/blood-gold-in-the-brazili… Aruch (2021) The Pinkaiti Partnership: a case study of transnational research and education in the Brazilian Amazon. PhD Thesis, University of Maryland Barnhardt, R., & Kawagley, A.O. (2005). Indigenous knowledge systems and Alaska Native ways of knowing. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 36(1), 8-23. Battiste, M. (2002). Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy in First Nations education: A literature review with recommendations. Apamuwek Institute. Garcia, B., Morgan, E.A., Aruch, M. et al. (2024). Large-scale forest protection: the successful case of the Kayapo people in the Brazilian Amazon. Reg Environ Change 24, 148 (2024). ICFC. (2024). Kayapo Project, Protecting the Brazilian Amazon. Web. https://icfcanada.org/our-projects/projects/kayapo-project Schwartzman, S. and B. Zimmerman. (2005). Conservation alliances with indigenous peoples of the Amazon. Conservation Biology 19(3): 721-727. Smith, L.T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies (2nd ed.). Zed. Tuck, E., McKenzie, M., & McCoy, K. (2014). Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708 Washington, S. A., Johnson, L., & Mendoza Chui, K. (2024). Indigenous Methodologies in International Research on Indigenous Family and Community Engagement. Review of Educational Research, 0(0). Zanotti, L., & Chernela, J. (2008). Conflicting cultures of nature: Ecotourism, education and the Kayapo of the Brazilian Amazon. Tourism Geographies, 10(4), 495–521. Zimmerman, B., C.A. Peres, J.R. Malcolm and T. Turner. (2001). Conservation and development alliances with the Kayapó of south-eastern Amazonia, a tropical forest indigenous people. Environmental Conservation 28(1): 10-22. Zimmerman, B., et al., (2020). Large Scale Forest Conservation With an Indigenous People in the Highly Threatened Southeastern Amazon of Brazil: The Kayapo. Encyclopedia of the World's Biomes, vol. 3. Elsevier, pp. 27–34.